The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.

The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.

The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information onMrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.

A U.S. official directly familiar with the notification, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the notification of possibly hundreds of additional emails with classified secrets came from the State Department Freedom of Information Act office to the Office of Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence.

The inspector general, the chief oversight watchdog for the entire U.S. intelligence community, subsequently sent a letter to the Republican chairmen and ranking Democrats of the Senate and House intelligence committees, the official said.

“We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked and transmitted via a secure server,” Mr. McCullough wrote the four lawmakers.

The U.S. official said the intelligence community has been informed that secret information had been contained in some of Mrs. Clinton’s private emails that originated from the FBI, the DNI and the CIA as well as a spy satellite agency. It is believed the 30,000 emails remain on a thumb drive in the possession of Mrs. Clinton’s private attorney, David Kendall.

The official said the intelligence community’s first response was to take steps to secure the handling of remaining 30,000 emails and make sure they were handled on top-secret servers to avoid any further breaches, and then to assess any damage to national security from the insecure handling and release of information already in some of the publicly disseminated emails.

“Containment first, then a damage assessment is how this must be handled,” the official said.

The official said the intelligence community was already concerned, for instance, that some classified information was inadvertently disclosed by the State Department in recent weeks when one of Mrs. Clinton’s emails about Libya was publicly released.

The inspector general’s notification to Capitol Hill and the Justice Department also opens possible legal exposure for Mrs. Clinton about improper handling of classified materials, something her attorney knows much about.

Mr. Kendall represented former CIA Director David H. Petraeus last year when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling national secrets because he gave some classified information to his mistress and biographer and stored a classified book of information in his home in an insecure manner.

Separately, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to explain what the bureau was doing to keep secure the classified information within 30,000 Clinton emails known to be on Mr. Kendall’s thumb drive.

“It’s a serious breach of national security if the United States government fails to secure classified material in the hands of people not authorized to possess it, no matter who they are. There are fundamental questions as to what the FBI is doing to securing these classified emails and why the State Department is not fully cooperating with the inspectors general at the State Department and the Intelligence Community to ensure that all of the appropriate emails are identified,” Mr. Grassley wrote.

Mr. Grassley also sent a letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry inquiring about the delay in sending the 30,000 emails to intelligence community inspectors general.

NEW YORK – A member of the independent Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi believes the Obama administration positioned arms dealer Marc Turi to take the fall for illicit arms deals to Libya orchestrated in 2011 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department.

The Justice Department has charged Turi with lying on an export-license application, alleging he hid his intent to ship weapons and ammunition to Libya in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 170. The Feb. 26, 2011, resolution imposed an arms embargo on all member states to prevent “the immediate prospect” of a Gadhafi-led attempt “to slaughter rebel forces in Benghazi that would likely result in massive civilian casualties.”

“We have ample evidence the Libyan gun-running operation was a White House operation and that the State Department under Hillary Clinton ran the show,” said Clare Lopez, a member of the Citizens’ Commission who served as a career operations officer with the CIA and is currently vice president for research at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy.

Lopez made it clear she was speaking for herself and not for the commission.

The Citizens Commission on Benghazi is a group of 17 retired admirals and generals, former intelligence agents, counter-terrorism experts, media specialists and former members of Congress organized in 2013 by Roger Aronoff, editor of Accuracy in Media. The founding members are retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Lyons and retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely.

The commission has been working behind the scenes for the past two years to ensure Congress uncovers what really happened in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

As WND reported Thursday, defense filings in the Department of Justice prosecution of Turi allege the Obama administration is willing to prosecute an innocent man to cover up the role Hillary Clinton played shipping weapons to Libya.

Lopez told WND the “key point is that Marc Turi, despite receiving written approval from the U.S. government to broker weapons to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, never actually went through any weapons purchases or shipments to Qatar, to the UAE or to Libya.”

She pointed to the Citizens’ Commission’s April 2014 interim report, which concluded it was Clinton’s State Department that was shipping the guns to Libya.

“Marc Turi was set up and framed for something he didn’t do, while others, who actually did collaborate with Qatar and the UAE to deliver the weapons under U.S. and NATO protection and supervision, are not only not prosecuted like Marc Turi, they’re not even mentioned,” Lopez said.

The official story

On Dec. 5, 2012, New York Times reporters James Risen, Mark Mazetti and Michael Schmidt, without citing a source, clearly implicated Turi as the arms dealer at the center of the 2011 redirection of weapons from Qatar that was interdicted by Libya and shown to world media by then-Gadhafi officials spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, as reported by WND.

In their article, titled “U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands,” they wrote: “The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.”

The Times story said the “case of Marc Turi, the American arms merchant who had sought to provide weapons to Libya, demonstrates other challenges the United States faced in dealing with Libya.”

“A dealer who lives in both Arizona and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Turi sells small arms to buyers in the Middle East and Africa, relying primarily on suppliers of Russian-designed weapons in Eastern Europe,” the Times said.

From there, the Times account of Turi’s involvement in the Qatar-Libya arms deal bears close resemblance to the “statement of facts” provided the U.S. District Court in Arizona in the Turi criminal indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix.

“In March 2011, just as the Libyan civil war was intensifying, Mr. Turi realized that Libya could be a lucrative new market, and applied to the State Department for a license to provide weapons to the rebels there, according to e-mails and other documents he has provided,” the Times article continued.

The newspaper noted American citizens are required to obtain U.S. approval for any international arms sales.

“Mr. Turi’s application for a license was rejected in late March 2011,” the Times reported. “Undeterred, he applied again, this time stating only that he planned to ship arms worth more than $200 million to Qatar.”

Then, the newspaper reported that in May 2011, Turi’s application was approved.

“Mr. Turi, in an interview, said that his intent was to get weapons to Qatar and that what ‘the U.S. government and Qatar allowed from there was between them.’ Two months later, though, his home near Phoenix was raided by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.”

The Times reported administration officials said he remained under investigation in connection with his arms dealings.

The Justice Department would not comment, the Times said.

The paper said: “Mr. Turi said he believed that United States officials had shut down his proposed arms pipeline because he was getting in the way of the Obama administration’s dealings with Qatar. The Qataris, he complained, imposed no controls on who got the weapons. ‘They just handed them out like candy, he said.”

‘Zero footprint’

As WND reported, Fox News analysts Andrew Napolitano, in a nationally syndicated column published July 1, said an interview with Turi conducted by Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge and Fox News Senior Executive Producer Pamela Browne led him to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials sent when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

The correspondence caused him to conclude “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty” that Hillary had conducted a “secret war” shipping arms to Libya illegally in 2011.

Among the approximately 2,000 emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has released from her private account, there is a conspicuous two-month gap. There are no emails between Clinton and her State Department staff during May and June 2012, a period of escalating violence in Libya leading up to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left four Americans dead.

A State Department spokesman told The Daily Beast that for the year 2012, only those emails related to the security of the consulate or to the U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya were made public and turned over to a House committee investigating the fatal Benghazi assault. But if that’s true, then neither Clinton nor her staff communicated via email about the escalating dangers in Libya. There were three attacks during that two-month period, including one that targeted the consulate.

That two-month period also coincides with a senior Clinton aide obtaining a special exemption that allowed her to work both as a staff member to the secretary and in a private capacity for Clinton and her husband’s foundation. The Associated Press has sued to obtain emails from Clinton’s account about the aide, Huma Abedin.

The status of Clinton’s emails has become an explosive political issue ever sinceThe New York Times revealed that the then-Secretary of State was using a private email server to handle her official correspondence. Cybersecurity experts believe the homebrew system opened Clinton and her colleagues to targeting from online spies. The State Department and Intelligence Community Inspector Generals have asked the Justice Department to look into possible disclosure of classified information.

Regarding the security situation in Libya, there was plenty for Clinton and her team to discuss via email. On May 22, 2012, the International Red Cross’s Benghazioffice was hit by rocket-propelled grenades.

“The attack on the International Red Cross was another attack that also involved us and threats to the compound there in Benghazi,” testified Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, a senior State Department security chief in Libya (PDF) before the House Oversight Committee in October 2012.

Then, on June 6, an improvised explosive device detonated outside of the U.S. consulate, ripping a 12-foot-wide hole in the compound’s wall and prompting officials to release a public warning on “the fluid security situation in Libya.”

Yet the State Department has not produced any emails to or from Clinton about the improvised bomb.

Republicans on the House committee investigating the Benghazi attack have called the absence of any email communication noting the explosive attack at the U.S. consulate “inexplicable.”

“There are gaps of months and months and months,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a March 8 interview.

“The State Department transferred 300 messages exclusively reviewed and released by her [Clinton’s] own lawyers,” Gowdy added in a May 22 statement noting gaps in the email records. “To assume a self-selected public record is complete, when no one with a duty or responsibility to the public had the ability to take part in the selection, requires a leap in logic no impartial reviewer should be required to make and strains credibility.”

Since then, the Benghazi committee has recovered one email, largely about business interests in Libya, from June 2012 after subpoenaing Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. The email from Blumenthal does not mention threats to the U.S. consulate, and there is no response from Clinton. The State Department subsequently gave the committee its copy.

U.S. interests weren’t the only ones being targeted in Benghazi. Five days after the improvised bomb damaged the consulate, an RPG hit a convoy carrying the British ambassador in Benghazi, wounding two bodyguards.

The United Kingdom and the Red Cross closed their facilities in Benghazi by the end of June 2012.

From there, the violence directed at the U.S. escalated. In a cable dated July 9, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens asked that the State Department provide a minimum of 13 security personnel for the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi, noting a heightened security threat. The State Department did not fulfill Stevens’s request, a Senate Intelligence Committee report (PDF) later revealed.

A Clinton aide didn’t respond specifically to a request about the two-month email absence. But in a statement to reporters, Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill noted, “More emails are slated to be released by the State Department next week, and we hope that release is as inclusive as possible.”

The two-month period wasn’t notable only for violence in Libya, and it has been the subject of questions about Clinton’s email and State Department records for a different reason.

On June 3, Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide and personal friend of the Clinton family, was given the status of a “special government employee,” which allowed her to stay on the State Department payroll while simultaneously working for the Clinton Foundation, Teneo, a consulting firm founded by Clinton confidant Doug Band, and as a private adviser to Clinton regarding her post-State Department transition.

Conflict-of-interest laws ordinarily would prohibit that arrangement, but the special designation exempted Abedinfrom some ethics rules.

In 2013, the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for State Department records on how Abedin obtained the special employee status. The news organization asked for emails about the matter.

Last week, a federal judge gave the State Department one week to respond to the AP’s two-year-old request. At midnight Tuesday, just before the judge’s deadline, the department’s lawyers submitted a declaration identifying about 68 pages of “potentially responsive” documents.

That marked the first time that the department acknowledged, in its two-year dispute with the AP, the existence of any agency documents related to Abedin’s arrangement.

Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, told The Daily Beast that while special government employees are not uncommon, the lack of information about Abedin may be keeping alive questions about potential conflict of interest in her work for the secretary and the foundation’s fundraising.

“Unless you come across any evidence to the contrary, there’s no reason to believe she was abusing the special government position,” Smallberg said. But, “the State Department has allowed those concerns to fester by withholding basic information,” Smallberg added. “Even if she did nothing wrong, secrecy breeds mistrust.”

State Department lawyers have argued that once all of Clinton’s emails are released on the agency’s website, following a vetting process that will take months, the AP’s request for information about Abedin will have been satisfied.

However, since some of the emails on Abedin that the AP wants likely fall within the June 2012 time frame, that might not be the case.

About 7 percent of Clinton’s emails have been released. All the emails are scheduled to be released on a rolling, monthly basis until the last set is released in January 2016, to comply with an order by a different federal judge. The next release is tentatively scheduled for this Friday.

No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced the start of her U.S. presidential campaign than several skeletons popped out of her closet.

The Clinton Foundation skeleton, at worst, gave foreign contributors a “pay to play” influence at the U.S. State Department, or, at best, the appearance of such. If the former, the Clintons have taken Harry Truman’s motto, “the buck stops here,” to mean millions of them.

Another skeleton is Hillary’s unauthorized use of a private email server along with her erasure of those communications while announcing her candidacy.

A third skeleton, Benghazi, is being examined by Chairman of the House Select Committee which is investigating the matter.

These three skeletons demand, and are receiving, close scrutiny. However, a fourth and much more damning skeleton—Hillary’s Muslim Brotherhood connection—still escapes scrutiny. Interestingly, in connection with the Benghazi investigation, three Hillary aides have been subpoenaed by Gowdy to produce emails. The one who has yet to do so completely is the one with the closest ties to the Brotherhood—Huma Abedin.

The subpoena stems from Gowdy’s efforts to track what communications were made by Hillary and her staff concerning Ambassador Chris Stevens movements prior to the Benghazi attack. Of interest also will be why efforts were undertaken after the attack to minimize involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Some background about the Brotherhood is needed to understand its driving force and why, under Hillary’s leadership as Secretary of State, a decision would have been made to embrace an organization determined to eliminate America and her allies.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a Sunni Islamist religious, political and social movement. Founder Hassan al-Banna’s fundamental goal was Islam’s global domination. That effort quickly turned violent. As its influence grew, its tentacles spread to 80 other nations, laying the groundwork for an envisioned global caliphate.

An early influential Brotherhood member, Sayyid Qutb, wrote of the need to cleanse the world of Western influence by imposing sharia. Years later, his work became Osama bin Laden’s and Ayman al-Zawahri’s “bible.” But, feeling the Brotherhood was not moving fast enough to achieve global Islam, they created an offshoot group—al-Qaeda—to quicken the pace.

At various times, as the Brotherhood gained influence causing domestic instability, nations cracked down on it. To survive, it renounced violence—birthing numerous splinter groups to do its violent bidding.

In 1981, one such group assassinated a Middle East peace apostle—Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—for his peace treaty with Israel. Hamas was another terrorist splinter group.

Viewing America as an obstacle to Islam’s global dominance, the Brotherhood—to this day—seeks to destroy America, informing followers to be “patient” as it so plots to do so.

In the 1990s, Brotherhood leaders mapped out a secret war plan to accomplish this—one discovered completely by accident in 2004. Despite this discovery and our knowledge about what is in the plan (such as using Muslim Brotherhood front companies within the U.S. and making claims of Islamophobia whenever Islam is criticized), the Brotherhood openly continues implementing that plan today. Meanwhile, under Obama’s tutelage, the federal agencies responsible for protecting us from such a threat fail to do so.

Just like Osama bin Laden’s 1997 declaration of war against America received little media attention, so too did the Brotherhood’s 2010 war declaration against America by its Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badi.

Badi called for jihad against “the Muslim’s real enemies, not only Israel but also the United States. Waging jihad against both of these infidels is a commandment of Allah that cannot be disregarded.”

The Brotherhood’s long running anti-American platform properly inhibited U.S. recognition of the group. But, incredibly, under the Obama/Clinton team, that changed overnight.

The skeleton in Hillary’s closet now in need of close scrutiny is how the Muslim Brotherhood instantly converted—in the Administration’s eyes but not those of the Brotherhood itself—from foe to friend.

Of note in all this is that the family of Hillary’s now longest serving assistant, Huma Abedin, has enjoyed an intensely close relationship with the Brotherhood for decades. Her father, Zyed Abedin, served as editor of an anti-Semitic journal funded by an Islamist; her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, replaced him as editor in 1993 when he died. As editor, Saleha has promoted the Muslim Brotherhood (she is a member of its female division), violent jihad and the “right” of women to be repressed under sharia.

Despite this connection and despite the fact Abedin was working for a Muslim Brotherhood journal at the time, Clinton’s request Abedin’s security clearance be expedited was honored. Yet, astonishingly to this day, the Abedin skeleton receives little media scrutiny.

The extent of the media’s focus on Abedin has been extremely limited. National security issues seem to be of no concern as it only placed Abedin in the spotlight as the wife of U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner. He was the one who gave the Oscar Mayer weiner song new meaning after exposing himself on Twitter.

If lines were drawn from opposite ends of an influence graph, one depicting the Muslim Brotherhood under President Obama and the other Abedin under Secretary Clinton, convergence occurs as America embraces a group still committed to our destruction.

Despite continuous Brotherhood terrorist activity since receiving Obama’s embrace—including the destruction of 52 churches in Egypt within a 24-hour period on August 13, 2013 and the arrests in Cairo earlier this month of thirteen members seeking to plant explosives to disrupt Suez Canal maritime traffic, Obama regularly welcomes Brotherhood representatives at the White House. He also continues his Muslim outreach programsgranting access to Brotherhood agents at the highest levels of our government despite convictions in U.S. courts of some for terrorist funding activities.

In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood continues to implement its war plan against America with the help of our own President.

Obama’s unbending commitment to a Muslim Brotherhood that, both in his eyes and Hillary’s, can do no wrong, is detailed in a secret directive known as “Presidential Study Directive-11.” It borders on treason this policy continues in place based on the Brotherhood’s aggressive anti-U.S activities both before and after its issuance.

Whether due to political correctness or naiveté, the media has failed to pull the Muslim Brotherhood’s skeleton out of Hillary’s closet. It needs to do so—thoroughly examining it to determine how a group so committed to America’s destruction remains so warmly embraced by those responsible for protecting us from it.

Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) places her hand over her heart during the National Anthem at the 30th annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, in this September 16, 2007 file photo. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott/Files)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton put her willingness to defend the Constitution in serious doubt when she promised Islamic countries the United States government would intimidate Americans who violate their free speech code, national security expert Stephen Coughlin told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

As Secretary of State, Clinton promised an international Islamic organization in 2011 that the United States government would “use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to intimidate Americans who improperly criticize Islam or Muhammad.

“An official of the United States, in an official communiqué, went to a foreign land to commit to a foreign leader that the United States Government would engage in the extra-legal practice of intimidating American citizens in the exercise of what is otherwise their protected free speech rights under the First Amendment,” Coughlin told TheDCNF.

“If her willingness to sell out Americans First Amendment rights to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation by categorizing as ‘hate speech’ anything that is deemed offensive to Islam is any indication, she may be the least qualified candidate to support and defend the Constitution,” he said.

Coughlin’s an attorney, decorated intelligence officer and expert on Islamic law and terrorism who consulted the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff for about a decade following 9/11, before the Muslim Brotherhood allegedly convinced the White House to ban him and “outlaw” his briefings.

He cites Clinton’s 2011 visit to Turkey and her cooperation with the OIC in his book as one example of how muslim ideologists wield influence in the “highest reaches” of the U.S. government.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The OIC is the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the U.N., consisting of 57 states that identify as “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”

After she helped the OIC secure passage of U.N. resolution 16/18, “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief,” Clinton promised the U.S. would take what steps it could to curb speech critical of Islam.

“And together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs,” she said in an address following the resolution’s passage.

“We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy,” she added. “So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor.”

The resolution condemns “any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or electronic media.”

Coughlin argues in his book it’s part of a deliberate OIC-led effort to bring the U.S. and other countries in line with Muslim speech standards, first by condemning and eventually criminalizing unwanted speech such as depictions of Muhammad.

“Over the last few years, major left wing and Islamists organizations have been working diligently to reframe free speech in an oppositional narrative that distinguishes sanctioned speech, designated free speech, from hate speech in a long term campaign to brand nonconforming speech as hate speech that is at first to be ridiculed and then criminalized,” he told TheDCNF.

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 10: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) receives a note from her aide Huma Abedin (L) as she testifies about the State Department’s FY2012 budget during a hearing of the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on March 10, 2011 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton has recently warned that proposed budget cuts would have a negative effect on U.S. national security policy. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton had just wrapped a campaign event in the warehouse of the Smuttynose Brewery in New Hampshire in May, when the crowd began crushing in, reaching out for selfies and handshakes.

Just a few feet away from Clinton dressed in a classic tweed navy shift, Huma Abedin, 39, moved through the crowd tracking her boss. Abedin, Clinton’s longest-serving aide, chatted breezily with acquaintances. But like a mother monitoring her child on the playground, she never let Clinton drift out of her line of sight, ever vigilant and poised to act.

After decades of rope lines — she started working for Clinton as a 19-year-old intern in the First Lady’s office — the role of body woman comes naturally to Abedin, and her hovering presence there, a few feet away from the candidate, is what normal feels like for Clinton.

Some political observers have expressed surprise that after all these years, Abedin is still at it. In 2013, Abedin briefly took a hiatus from Clinton world to try on a different role: supportive campaign spouse, speaking and appearing with her husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, in a video kicking off his New York City mayoral run and campaigning for him in the city. But after Weiner’s bid self-combusted amid sexting revelations, Abedin seemed to pick up right where she left off: gearing up for another tour with Clinton. And another grueling national campaign.

The road is typically a younger staffer’s gig, but there she was on the Chipotle security tape footage, standing next to Clinton as she ordered her now famous burrito bowl on the way to Iowa. When Clinton flew first class from Boston to Washington in April, it was Abedin who sat with the former secretary of state. During a photo shoot with Glamour magazine last summer to promote Clinton’s memoir, “Hard Choices,” Abedin was also on set, making sure the couch was firm enough not to swallow up Clinton, and holding up outfits for her to choose, a source recalled.

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has a word with aide Huma Abedin at the start of a campaign rally at Capital High School in Charleston, W.Va., Wednesday, March 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Yet Abedin’s early appearances on the trail and book tour fail to capture the larger and growing role she now occupies. Abedin, inside sources said, is weaning herself slowly away from a life on the road to occupy a perch overseeing the campaign operation and serving more often as an independent surrogate for her boss.

When she is on the trail, Abedin has taken on an expansive set of duties. On trips to South Carolina, for instance, which Clinton visited last week to attend the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Abedin has held two private meetings with South Carolina state legislators on her boss’s behalf.

When Clinton got stuck in traffic on her way to a meeting with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — who since the meeting has refused to endorse her campaign — Abedin met with him one-on-one for 45 minutes before Clinton eventually appeared.

It marks a transformative shift for Abedin, from loyal assistant, more often seen than heard, to campaign power center of her own. “For all intents and purposes, she’s No. 3 on the campaign, after [campaign chairman John] Podesta and [campaign manager Robby] Mook,” explained a Clinton campaign aide.

Her elevation comes as longtime top Clinton aides like Cheryl Mills, Maggie Williams and Philippe Reines have receded in influence and are not functioning as part of the current campaign’s inner circle. Instead, Abedin has been elevated to the most senior member of Clinton’s old guard, and the person filling a role Clinton has always valued: the strong, trusted, female adviser.

Clinton and Abedin, according to top officials who worked with them at the State Department, also share a visible bond that comes from having spent the majority of the past two decades side by side.

“With the miles and days on the road, you become family,” said Phil Gordon, former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, who worked closely with Abedin at the State Department.“Hillary Clinton has seen her grow over the past 20 years. The two of them have probably spent more time with each other than with their families.”

But part of Abedin’s elevated role in 2016 means giving up some of the proximity to Clinton that for years has been a source of her ever-expanding power in Hillaryland.

In thousands of emails released Tuesday night by the State Department, Abedin’s omnipresent role organizing Clinton’s life was clearly on display: the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke, former Vice President Al Gore, Sen. Chuck Schumer and even former President Bill Clinton all phoned Abedin to reach Clinton. Abedin scheduled Clinton’s hair and medical appointments, knew where Clinton’s physical therapy instructions were to be found, delivered to her the sacred daily briefing book, and enjoyed full access to Clinton, at home or at work.

“Just knock on the door to the bedroom if it’s closed,” Clinton writes to Abedin in one email, when she’s been working and resting at home. Then there’s the instant classic: Abedin coaching an increasingly frustrated Clinton on how to use a fax machine. “Just pick up the phone and hang it up. And leave it hung up,” Abedin commands.

While insiders said that Abedin typically plays just a listening role in policy meetings, the emails show she sometimes weighed in privately on foreign affairs. “I personally think this shows confidence in his position as he’s not worried about an outcry from his fathers’ loyalists,” Abedin wrote to Clinton in 2009, after King Abdullah of Jordan named Prince Hussein the Crown Prince.

But more than any single email, what stood out from the information dump was that Abedin was copied on so much of Clinton’s correspondence.

“At this point, Huma’s role is so important that they are now baking that into the process of the campaign,” said Michael Feldman, a former adviser to Al Gore who has known Abedin for years. “She provides the judgment, perspective and institutional memory that literally can’t be replicated. When you have someone who can be a surrogate not just externally, but internally, that saves a lot of time. It becomes a glue that holds things together.”

FG: Well this is really the crux of the matter and at Judicial Watch, you are all about the law. You are working closely with federal courts to try to ensure compliance with the law. Not just the Freedom of Information Act law, but others that you uncover wrongdoing concerning in the course of your FOIA efforts. And Chris Farrell, let me just again put this to you: We’re told that Huma Abedin—a rather colorful character to say the least, a woman who has been associated by among others, our own organization Center for Security Policy, Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, and so on, with the Muslim Brotherhood—was evidently among those responsible for selecting which of these emails Hillary Clinton gave over to the federal government, some of which you’re now getting access to, and some of which were simply destroyed. Again, Chris, does this constitute in your estimation illegal activity?

CF: It does. Huma Abedin has major, major unresolved counterintelligence issues pertaining to her familial connections, [and] her work arrangements, where she was essentially crescent lighting, or moonlighting, in a very particular special employee arrangement where she left government service as a straight-up employee and became what they call a ‘special’ government employee where there are outside consulting arrangements—while serving as deputy chief of staff for the Secretary of State. This is mindboggling that you would have anybody with these family connections and these outside business interests in the inner circle of the Secretary’s office. I can’t imagine a more conflicted counterintelligence issue with respect to her personally and professionally. It’s a nightmare.

In the course of my work, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, I read the transcripts of an interview Ms. Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Ms. Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.

What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.

Mr. Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.

In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to it is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.

Mr. Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.

How could that be?

That’s where Mrs. Clinton’s secret State Department and her secret war come in. Because Mrs. Clinton used her husband’s computer server for all of her email traffic while she was the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what she was up to.

Now we know.

She obtained permission from President Obama and consent from congressional leaders in both houses of Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of those countries.

Many of the rebels Mrs. Clinton armed, using the weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Mr. Turi and others, were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies. There was no congressional declaration of war, no congressional vote, no congressional knowledge beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no federal statute that authorized this.

When Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, asked Mrs. Clinton at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify before congressional committees, whether an oath has been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who was twice prosecuted for misleadingCongress about the contents of his urine while not under oath. He was acquitted.)

Here is her relevant testimony:

Mr. Paul: My question is is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?

Mrs. Clinton: To Turkey? … I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody’s ever raised that with me. I, I .

Mr. Paul: It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I’d like to know is the [Benghazi] annex that was close by . Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons transferred to other countries any countries, Turkey included?

Mrs. Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And I will see what information is available and ahhhh .

At the time that Mrs. Clinton denied knowledge of the arms shipments, she and her State Department political designee, Andrew Shapiro, had authorized thousands of shipments of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to U.S. enemies to fight her secret war. Among the casualties of her war were U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three colleagues, who were assassinated at the American consulate in Benghazi, by rebels Mrs. Clinton armed with American military hardware in violation of American law.

This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it was the product of conspirators in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is the outrage among the balance of Congress?

Hillary Clinton lied to Congress, gave arms to terrorists and destroyed her emails. How much longer can she hide the truth? How much longer can her lawlessness go unchallenged and unprosecuted? Does she really think the American voters will overlook her criminal behavior and put her in the White House where she can pardon herself?

• Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is an analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

Federal investigators may be closer to seizing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illicit off-site email server as evidence emerges that she transmitted classified information through it and that key Obama White House officials knew about her clandestine email account for years.

On Tuesday the Department of State made available on its website 3,000 pages of Clinton’s emails. Clinton emphatically declared months ago that none of the thousands of emails she sent using her hacker-friendly dedicated server contained classified information.

As it turns out the State Department had to redact 25 of the newly unveiled emails because they contained the very same classified information Hillary said she didn’t send. This is but a fraction of the 55,000 pages of email the former secretary of state gave to the diplomatic agency for processing. Under federal court order, the State Department is conducting monthly Clinton document dumps after screening and redacting the emails.

Clinton has admitted that tens of thousands of the emails she sent that happened to be U.S. government property were deleted. Emails were scrubbed while subject to a subpoena from the House Select Committee that is investigating the terrorist attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that took place on Sept. 11, 2012.

Around the time of the attack Clinton scapegoated the innocent director of an anti-Islam movie trailer that almost nobody had seen. She claimed back then that the sophisticated military-style operation materialized spontaneously from an angry mob of protesters gathered outside the facility which was in Islamist-held territory. The Benghazi coverup the Obama administration engineered to get President Obama safely reelected in November 2012 has been gradually falling apart.

This new revelation that classified information went out into cyberspace by way of Clinton’s laughably insecure server clears the way for the U.S. government to seize the machine itself, the Washington Timesreports.

Despite demands from Republicans on Capitol Hill who are investigating Clinton, she has steadfastly refused to hand over the server whose existence became public knowledge earlier this year. She caused a firestorm before launching her presidential bid when she admitted that all her government emails from her time at the Department of State were routed through her own personal Internet server that has been traced back to her Chappaqua, N.Y., home address.

PolitiFact confirmed that Clinton didn’t use government email when she was at the State Department — not even once. “Although some former secretaries of state occasionally used personal emails for official business, Clinton is the only one who never once used an @state.gov email address in the era of email,” the fact-check organization previously concluded.

A former senior intelligence official told the Washington Times that government policy now requires a thorough investigation with an eye to the other Internet servers through which the classified information may have passed.

According to the news report:

The procedures are spelled out by the National Security Agency’s special panel on controlling leaked secrets, called the Committee on National Security Systems. It published a policy, “Securing Data and Handling Spillage Events,” that fits the case of Mrs. Clinton’s unauthorized private server, kept at her home while she was secretary of state, according to the retired officer’s reading of the regulations.

The policy stipulates that “[m]alicious attacks are alarming, but more often spillages occur from unintentional user error or negligence.”

“Hillary Clinton’s server has classified information and should be taken by the government and sanitized, wiped clean or destroyed,” said the cybersecurity expert who requested anonymity. It is not clear if any of the procedures have yet been carried out in this case, he said.

Clinton’s fast and loose approach to email security almost certainly compromised U.S. national security.

Clinton’s emails and telephone calls were probably targeted by foreign governments’ intelligence agencies, the former official said. Her server was probably breached, he added.

Clinton’s email account was a virtual open book for hackers from hostile governments and terrorist groups, but anyone who interacted with her through it was also placed at risk. This is because, as one news report stated, whoever created the system “didn’t enable what’s called a Sender Policy Framework, or SPF, a simple setting that would prevent hackers sending e-mails that appear to be from clintonemail.com.”

The publication of Clinton’s emails this week also demonstrates that senior Obama operatives David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta were long aware of Clinton’s cloak-and-dagger email infrastructure. The irretrievably corrupt Clintons created the system to frustrate Freedom of Information Act requesters, shield Hillary’s correspondence from congressional oversight, and steer money to the international cash-for-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

It’s happening long after the rest of us understood that Mrs. Clinton bore a unique responsibility for the tragic and avoidable disaster in Benghazi that cost the lives of four brave Americans, so please: there is no need for applause. After all, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS Sixty Minutes, and NBC News are just doing their jobs. Finally.

Well, almost doing their jobs. For most of these, the Clinton “story” is all about process. As more emails turn up that Hillary “overlooked” when she scoured her personal server, the New York Times wonders if any serious discrepancy will emerge, and gives Hillary’s spokesperson’s effort to bury the story far more credit than he deserves.

Here is Hillary’s problem: not only did she conduct official business on a private server, apparently with the blessing of a key lackey, Undersecretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy; but as copies of those emails surface, key elements of the story she has tried to suppress from Day One are emerging.

First, there is the matter of who “lost” Libya. The email traffic released nearly two years after House Democrats claimed the State Department had provided everything there was to know about Benghazi to Congress, shows that Hillary was desperate to hide her responsibility for U.S. policy toward Qaddafi and the jihadi-dominated rebel alliance that overthrew his regime.

We now have multiple emails, none of which was produced until recently, showing that when Libya was going well, Hillary wanted to be seen as the architect of the “lead from behind” and “zero footprint” strategy that allowed the Obama administration to claim a foreign policy victory without engaging U.S. troops.

Jake Sullivan, her top political advisor, drafted a glowing “talking points” memo on the Libya success story on August 21, 2011, which the Clinton team later realized had become an embarrassment and needed to be suppressed. It was only just recently produced.

Now we learn that an important player behind Hillary’s grandstanding was none other than long-time Clinton consigliore, Sid Blumenthal.

Until just two months ago, the State Department pretended that Blumenthal’s emails to Secretary Clinton didn’t exist, even though Mrs. Clinton forwarded them to her inner circle, often at their official state.gov addresses.

Then, faced with a subpoena from Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi Select Committee, State finally produced 300 emails previously withheld by Clinton, including “intelligence” memos sent by Blumenthal to Hillary’s private email account.

Gowdy could see the smoke, and issued another subpoena, this time to compel Blumenthal to testify under oath. At that closed-door hearing two weeks ago, Blumenthal produced an additional fifteen memos to Secretary Clinton that the State Department claims it can’t find. Like so much else.

After all the entire aim of the Obama-Clinton policy was to get the Islamists in power across the region. When they couldn’t do so democratically, they went to war under false pretenses as in Libya. Considering the convoluted nature of Egypt’s system of elections, it’s doubtful that they would have had any problems forcing the authorities into giving them what they wanted.

Now, however, the news website Al-Monitor reports that there is evidence that Morsi did not win the 2012 elections after all, but was merely declared the winner by the electoral commission, in order to avert the violence that was sure to follow an announcement to the contrary.

Per Al-Monitor’s translation, the document states that the commission had opted to “take the decision that is correct and most beneficial for the country and its citizens, despite it being in violation of the law, and announce Dr. president of Egypt. This is to spare the country of the bloody conflict that will inevitably occur in the event that Ahmed Shafiq is announced president….”

The letter also, however, spells out another option: namely, and again per the translation of Al-Monitor, “to reject all pressure – whether internal or external – and announce the facts to the Egyptian and global public opinion, and reveal the defects and gross cases of manipulation and forgery that marred the electoral process as a whole. This is in addition to revealing the criminal pressures, practices and threats that the chairman and members of the committee, as well as their families, have faced.”

The allusion to “external” sources of pressure is particularly intriguing. According to Al-Monitor, local Egyptian press has reported that then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contacted Tantawi prior to the announcement of the election results with the aim of “putting pressure on Egyptian authorities to hand power over to Morsi.

Of course that raises basic questions about their own narrative of a coup that overthrow Morsi. In practice Mubarak and Morsi were both removed from power after the military backed popular uprisings. What isn’t discussed much is that the coup against Mubarak was backed by Obama and Hillary.

Among other things, we’re seeing the clearing of the board and the resetting of Egypt back to pre-Arab Spring conditions with Mubarak’s people making a comeback. The other side of the coin means that some resolution will be achieved with the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone expecting Egypt to fundamentally change is likely to be disappointed.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new State Department documents showing that Hillary Clinton and the State Department’s response to the Benghazi attack was immediately determined by top Obama White House officials, particularly Ben Rhodes, then-White House deputy strategic communications adviser, and Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. The new documents were forced from the U.S. State Department under court order in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01511)).

Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request on June 13, 2014, and subsequently a lawsuit on September 4, 2014, seeking:

Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.

A September 11, 2012, email sent at 6:21 p.m. by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland to Meehan, Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, and Clinton’s personal aide Jacob Sullivan shows that the State Department deferred to the White House on the official response to the Benghazi attack. Referencing pending press statements by Barack Obama and Clinton, Nuland wrote: “We are holding for Rhodes clearance. BMM, pls advise asap.”

Meehan responded three minutes later, at 6:24 p.m.: “Ben is good with these and is on with Jake now too.”

Rhodes sent an email at 9:48 p.m. to senior White House and State officials on the issue: “We should let the State Department statement be our comment for the night.”

An email from Meehan, sent at 10:15 p.m. on September 11 to Rhodes, Nuland, Sullivan, Kennedy and Clinton aide Philippe Reines, further confirms the White House approval of Hillary Clinton’s statement tying the Benghazi terrorist attack to an Internet video: “All, the Department of State just released the following statement. Per Ben [Rhodes’] email below, this should be the USG comment for the night.”

The “USG comment” turned out to be Clinton’s notorious public statement, made hours after the initial terrorist attack, falsely suggesting that the Benghazi assault was a “response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”

Rhodes emailed Meehan, Sullivan and Reines at 11:45 p.m. on September 11, writing, “Fyi – we are considering releasing this tonight.” The next line is redacted. The email also included a “Readout of President’s Call to Secretary Clinton,” the contents of which are also completely redacted.

On September 12, the day after the attack, Meehan sent an email to Obama administration officials announcing that “to ensure we are all in sync on messaging for the rest of the day, Ben Rhodes will host a conference call for USG communicators on this chain at 9:15AM ET today.”

The new documents show that the Obama administration engaged domestic and foreign Islamist groups and foreign nationals to push the Internet video narrative. The day after the attack, Rashad Hussain, the Obama administration’s special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), sent an email to Ambassador Ufuk Gokcen, the OIC’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Cenk Uraz, an official with the OIC, pushing the video as the cause of the Benghazi attack. The email has the subject line: “Urgent: Anti-Islamic Film and Violence” and reads in part:

I am sure you are considering putting a statement on the film and the related violence. In addition to the condemnation of the disgusting depictions, it will be important to emphasize the need to respond in a way that is consistent with Islamic principles, i.e. not engaging in violence and taking innocent life …

The resulting OIC statement, sent to Hussain by the OIC’s Uraz, linked the film, as requested by the Obama administration, to the Benghazi attack and suggested that the United States restrict free speech in response. The official OIC statement called the film “incitement” and stated that the attack in Benghazi and a demonstration in Cairo “emanated from emotions aroused by a production of a film had hurt [sic] the religious sentiments of Muslims. The two incidents demonstrated serious repercussions of abuse of freedom of expression.” The OIC’s statement referenced its own efforts to criminalize criticism of Islam. Hussain sent the OIC statement immediately to other Obama administration officials, including then-Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills, who thanks Hussain for the email.

The State Department withheld communications on September 12, 2012, between Hillary Clinton’s senior aide Huma Abedin and Rashad Hussain about an article passed by him about how “American Muslim leaders” were tying the video to the Benghazi attack. At the time of the Benghazi attack, Abedin had been double-dipping, working as a consultant to outside clients while continuing as a top adviser at State. Abedin’s outside clients included Teneo, a strategic consulting firm co-founded by former Bill Clinton counselor Doug Band. According to Fox News, Abedin earned $355,000 as a consultant for Teneo, in addition to her $135,000 “special government employee” compensation.

The State Department also disclosed a document, dated September 13, 2012, entitled “USG Outreach and Engagement Post Benghazi Attack.” This record details how the Obama administration reached out to domestic groups, foreign groups and governments in a full-court press to tie the video to the Benghazi attack. The document “captures USG efforts to engage outside voices to encourage public statements that denounce the attack make it clear that the anti-Muslim film does not reflect American [sic].” The document highlights the use of Hillary Clinton’s statement tying the terrorist attack to an Internet video. The “outreach” document also highlights “Special Envoy’s engagement” with the OIC and the “Saudi Ambassador.”

The documents show that the Internet video was raised in a September 15 discussion between Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The “eyes only” “secret” document was partially declassified. Davutoglu “called the controversial anti-Islam video a ‘clear provocation,’ but added that wise people should not be provoked by it.” The next line is blacked out and the markings show that it will not be declassified until 2027, more than twelve years from now.

Another email, evidently from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), sent to Meehan and other top White House and administration officials, shows that the administration took no action to deploy military assets almost five hours after the attack begun:

OSD has received queries asking if military assets are being sent to either location [Libya and Egypt]. Have responded “not to our knowledge.”

The State Department referred Judicial Watch to documents in the batch of 55,000 emails allegedly turned over by Hillary Clinton and searched in response to the court order in this lawsuit. These emails were published on the State Department’s web site, but are also available here. In addition, the State Department produced new documents containing Hillary Clinton emails. In one such email (September 11, 2012 at 11:40 p.m.) from Clinton to Nuland, Sullivan and top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, with the subject line “Chris Smith,” Clinton writes: “Cheryl told me the Libyans confirmed his death. Should we announce tonight or wait until morning?”

Nuland responds: “We need to ck family’s druthers. If they are OK, we should put something out from you tonight.” Mills then replies to Nuland, “Taking S [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] off.” (Sean Smith, not “Chris Smith” was one of four Americans killed at Benghazi.)

On September 13, 2012, Politico’s Mike Allen sent then-National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor an Independent.co.uk news article entitled “America was warned of embassy attack but did nothing.” The story reported that “senior officials are increasingly convinced” the Benghazi attack was “not the result of spontaneous anger.” Vietor forwarded the story to other top White House and State Department officials, but Vietor’s accompanying comments and the comments of other top Obama appointees are completely redacted. The administration also redacted several emails of top State officials discussing a statement by Romney campaign spokesman criticizing the “security situation in Libya.”

In April 2014, Judicial Watch first obtained smoking gun documents showing that it was the Obama White House’s public relations effort that falsely portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.”

The documents include an email by White House operative Ben Rhodes sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, with the subject line: “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.” This “prep” was for Ambassador Susan Rice in advance of her appearances on Sunday news shows to discuss the Benghazi attack and deflect criticism of the administration’s security failures by blaming the attack on spontaneous protests linked to the video.

The email listed as one of the administration’s key talking points:

“Goal”: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

Documents released by Judicial Watch last month further confirm that the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, Rice and Obama immediately knew the attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

“These documents show the Obama White House was behind the big lie, first promoted by Hillary Clinton, that an Internet video caused the Benghazi terrorist attack,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, “Top White House aide Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, and many key Obama officials pushed others to tie the Internet video to the attacks. It is disturbing that the Obama administration would use Islamist radicals to push the false Benghazi story in a way that would abridge free speech. It is little wonder that Mrs. Clinton and the entire Obama administration have fought so hard to keep these documents from the American people. All evidence now points to Hillary Clinton, with the approval of the White House, as being the source of the Internet video lie.”

It’s bad enough that Hillary Clinton failed to turn over email exchanges between her and Sidney Blumenthal, but editing the emails to remove certain problematic topics is an admission of guilt. Because it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated.

Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public.

Here’s some of what Hillary tried to cover up.

For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were “well aware” of which “major oil companies and international banks” supported them during the rebellion, information they would “factor into decisions” about about who would be given access to the country’s rich oil reserves.

The email, which Clinton subsequently scrubbed from her server, indicated Clinton was aware that involvement in the controversial conflict could have a significant financial benefit to firms that were friendly to the Libyan rebels.

Considering the tangled web of energy contracts involving Hillary and her husband, particularly from foreign companies, this could be explosive. Especially since the French, whose oil companies are mentioned as players, were the ones originally pushing this illegal war.

Clinton withheld an email sent March 22, 2011 that described the French government’s alleged involvement in forming the transitional government as the uprising against Gaddafi raged.

In the email, Blumenthal claimed the French had “provided money and guidance to assist” with the emerging Libyan council.

“In return for this assistance, [French government] officers indicated that they expected the government of Libya to favor French firms and national interests, particularly regarding the oil industry in Libya,” Blumenthal wrote.

The question is what ties Blumenthal and Clinton may have had to those companies. It’s also hypocritical considering the incessant liberal “No blood for oil” chants about Iraq, when this was actually a war where blood was shed for oil.

An email in which Blumenthal encouraged Clinton to consider the same “shock-and-awe” tactics former President George W. Bush employed in Iraq was also not included among the emails Clinton provided to State.

Again, the hypocrisy is obvious.

Clinton withheld another email that showed she informed Blumenthal of a “very good call” she had with the new Libyan president, Mohammed Yussef el Magariaf. She deleted another, in which she called a memo about Magariaf’s intention and history “a keeper.”

So we’ve got private Clinton contacts that are kept out of reach of even the government. This is very troubling.

And here is Clinton deleting references to Islamic law in Libya

For example, in July 2012, Clinton removed paragraphs from a Blumenthal memo that warned “simply completing the election…and fulfilling a list of proper democratic milestones may not create a true democracy.” Blumenthal also wrote — in sections that Clinton deleted before providing the document to State — that the government would likely be “founded on Sharia,” or Islamic laws.

This is downright criminal.

Hillary isn’t just not turning over emails. She censored materials from emails that were turned over.

The United States supported the secret supply of weapons to Libyan rebels while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State according to federal court documents obtained by Fox News.

In a sworn declaration to the District Court of Arizona May 5th 2015, a career CIA officer David Manners said, “It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council.” The timing matters because in the Spring of 2011 the Libyan opposition was not formally recognized, and the direct supply of arms was not authorized. At that time, the CIA Director was David Petraeus. (DAVID MANNERS DOCUMENT HERE)

Manners testified before a grand jury investigating American defense contractor Marc Turi who faces trial this September on two counts that he allegedly violated the arms control export act by making false statements.

Turi and his company Turi Defense Group are at the center of an ongoing federal investigation over the source and user of weapons defined in court documents as “end user” or “end use” flowing into Libya as Moammar Qaddafi’s regime was collapsing in 2011.

In “United States of America v. Marc Turi and Turi Defense Group,” Manners identifies himself as having 18 years experience as an intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA, with foreign postings as Chief of Station in Prague, Czechoslovakia and in Amman, Jordan. Manners also stated he was “the executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the National Security Agency.”

Manners’ declaration supports statements made exclusively to FOX News by Turi about what President Obama’s team and members of Congress knew about weapons flowing into the region during the chaotic Arab Spring of 2011.

“When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way,” Turi said, emphasizing that poor oversight, allowed individuals hostile to the United States to get arms. “The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria.”

As part of Fox’s ongoing investigation of the 2012 terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, as well as former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, Turi spoke exclusively to FOX Senior Executive Producer Pamela Browne. The investigation premiered on “FOX Files” on the FOX BUSINESS NETWORK.

Turi was one of several thousand US arms contractors licensed by the State Department to sell and move weapons around the world. He’s been a go to guy for the US government, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I got involved in this business in the 1990s,” Turi explained. “I’ve been involved in all type of operations, regarding transportation, logistics, and liaising with those foreign governments.”

Turi admits to a criminal history. He told Fox that in the late 1980’s, he stole a computer, his roommate’s car, and wrote bad checks including one for $100,000 dollars. Through court records, Fox News verified he was arrested, convicted, and served time in an Arizona jail.

“In my youth, I made some very very bad mistakes…I was discharged from the United States Navy other under than honorable conditions…and I’ve been fighting ever since to get that honor back.” (TURI DISCHARGE DOCUMENT HERE)

Licensed arms contractors require painstaking compliance in order to obtain the necessary approvals set by strict US government regulations. While Hillary Clinton served as President Obama’s Secretary of State, American arms dealers were awarded a record number of export licenses to sell sophisticated weapons, military parts and technology internationally.

“That’s actually been a huge, policy position, of the Obama Administration,” Celina Realuyo, a professor of national security at the Perry Center at the National Defense University explained to FOX. Realuyo has served two presidents with expertise in tracking down money and weaponry used in what are called “dark networks” that can channel weapons to criminal and designated foreign terrorist organizations.

More than 86-thousand licenses with a value of $44.3 billion dollars were granted in 2011… a surge of more than $10 billion dollars from the previous year.

In the spring of 2011, Turi says his high level contacts both inside and outside of the US government, encouraged him to explore options to arm the Libyan opposition as they tried to overthrow then Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi. He says his associates included David Manners, a former intelligence officer with the CIA who stated his expertise to the court as an expert with knowledge of “authorized covert arms transfers.”

Turi provided documents and email exchanges with high level members of Congress as well as military, and State Department employees which are currently being reviewed by Fox News.

Turi said, “That’s where I came up with this “zero footprint” Arab supply chain whereby, our foreign ally supplies another, Arab country.” In this case, the US would supply conventional weapons to a US ally-Qatar, who would inturn supply them to Libya, as a kind of workaround.

“If you want to limit the exposure to the US government, what you simply do is outsource it to your allies,” Turi said, describing the practice. “The partners-the Qataris, and the Emiratis did exactly what they were contracted to do.” Turi told Fox he never supplied any weapons to Qatar, and it was in the hands of the US government and the State Department’s Bureau of Political and Military Affairs which was headed by a key Clinton aide, Andrew Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro was responsible to oversee the export control process at the State Department.

March 2011 was a busy time for Hillary Clinton. Even today, congressional investigators doubt they have all of the emails from her personal server when she was Secretary of State. On the 14th, along with Chris Stevens, who was then the number two man in Libya serving as the embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission, Clinton met with Libya’s Mustafa Jibril in Paris– a senior member of the TNC. The next day, Secretary Clinton met with Egypt’s new foreign minister Nabil el Arabi in Cairo and walked through Tahrir Square with her senior adviser Huma Abedin. At the same time, Turi’s proposal, a 267-million dollar contract, was working its way through US government channels.

“My application was submitted on the 12th,” Turi said his contacts gave the proposal to the then Secretary of State. “…through their relationship with the TNC, then provided that application information to Mrs. Clinton via the TNC council when she was in Cairo. That’s what was told to me…and emailed. ”

Turi provided Fox News with emails he exchanged – in early April 2011 – with Chris Stevens to alert him to the proposed weapons deal. The emails were previously cited by the New York Times, but Fox News is now making the message traffic public. (CHRIS STEVENS EMAIL DOCUMENT HERE)

Stevens replied with a “thank you ” and wrote “I’ll keep it in mind and share it with my colleagues in Washington.”

As FOX Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge first reported, it was a heavily redacted email released to the Benghazi Committee last month that clearly states that on April 8, 2011, a day after the Turi/Stevens exchange, Secretary Clinton was interested in arming the rebels using contractors:

“FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered,” Clinton wrote. Significantly, the State Department released emails blacked out this line, but the version given to the Benghazi Select Committee was complete. (CLINTON EMAIL DOCUMENT HERE)

In May 2011, Turi got a brokering approval from the State Department for Qatar. In July, his Arizona home was raided by federal agents.

“They came in the full body armor, and weapons and, they take my computers and my cell phones and that was it. That was the last time I saw them. And they’ve been chasing me all over the world for the past three years, speaking to associates of mine all over the United States and looking into my records and my past.”

His attorney Jean-Jacques Cabou told Fox in a series of emails that his client had a track record working for the “US government through the Central Intelligence Agency” and the government case is an “epic fishing expedition.” Adding his client”…neither lied on any application nor did he do anything other than support U.S. foreign policy and interests in the Middle East.”

Turi believes his “zero footprint” idea was stolen out from under him, and now he is being blamed for a program that went off the rails.

Such are the stakes in this case, that the Justice Department National Security Division is involved, and recently requested that some proceedings remain secret under CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act. The Federal Judge wrote on June 16 “the government can seek protection under CIPA 4 in this case only by complying with Ninth Circuit law by making a formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has actual control over the discoverable information.”

In his sworn declaration to the court, Manners said his grand jury testimony on covert arms transfers was cut off by the government lawyer. “As a result of the Assistant United States Attorney’s actions, I believe that (a) the grand jury never received a full and complete picture of authorized covert arms transfers and their relevance to the present case. ”

“At some point, I may be that internet video excuse,” Turi said, referring to statements where then Secretary of Clinton and members of the Obama Administration wrongly blamed an obscure anti-Islam video for the 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans. “I don’t know. But, it’s really strange that the US government would invest three years, a multi-year investigation, fly all over the world interviewing people, for an application.”

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Obama Administration says Iran’s chants of “Death to America” are “not helpful,” but won’t have impact on nuke talks.

Admiral Lyons says, “The core elements of the Iranian nuclear program are fully intact and have increased 20-40% since these sham negotiations started.

It all begins in 2008 when then candidate Sen. Barak Obama, according to Michael Levine, opened secret negotiations with the Ayatollah’s. The message was don’t sign any agreements with the Bush Administration you will get a better deal from me when I’m President, I am a friend of Iran. This borders on treason! Mind boggling.

Let’s talk about Benghazi. This is a Hillary scenario, Hillary is a pathological liar. Hillary’s emails – You know everyone of our enemies have hacked into her emails, they have the full book on her. She (Hillary Clinton) is totally compromised, she is damaged goods. There’s no way she can be allowed back into the White House.

4:25 – Things were working out in Libya until she met with a Muslim Brotherhood operative at the Paris Westin Hotel for a 45 minute meeting. After that meeting Hillary canceled our negotiations with Gaddafi despite every military leader and intelligence experts advice not too.

5:30 A few words on Christopher Stevens. DIA had 10 days warning the Benghazi attacks were going to happen. If you were SECDEF would you not put countermeasures in place to defend your Ambassador?

7:50 If I had to speculate I’d say this was an operation that went terribly wrong. If you remember in the Summer of 2012 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi came to DC with one main objective.

Morsi’s #1 objective was to get the release of The Blind Sheikh, currently sitting in a U.S. Federal Penitentiary for masterminding the first 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

My view was Benghazi was all about the kidnapping Christopher Stevens (Libya Ambassador) and exchanging him for the blind sheikh – when you put it all together nothing makes sense to me.

Hillary Clinton’s policies as secretary of state failed to address several crises that have produced a record number of displaced persons worldwide, according to a Republican group that also noted her lack of a commemoration for World Refugee Day.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a report last week that there were 59.5 million people who were forcibly displaced at the end of 2014, the largest number ever recorded. More than half of the displaced persons were children. Refugee levels spiked in the Middle East, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, all regions where Clinton’s policies faced criticism during her tenure as secretary of state.

America Rising PAC, a GOP opposition research firm, pointed out that Clinton—the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president—did not make a statement on World Refugee Day, this past Saturday.

“Secretary Clinton’s silence on World Refugee Day was extremely telling,” Colin Reed, executive director of America Rising, said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “Under her failed leadership at the State Department, the world became less stable and more dangerous, and her policies led to the global unrest that has contributed to the number of refugees reaching record levels.”

The UNHCR said one of the main contributors to the burgeoning refugee total is the four-year civil war in Syria, where an average of 42,500 people were displaced each day of last year. Syria has the world’s most internally displaced people (7.6 million) as well as refugees that have fled to other countries (3.88 million).

In March 2011, Clinton said the United States did not intervene in Syria because of the perception that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a “reformer.” Critics later derided Clinton for the comment when Assad escalated his crack down on the country’s opposition and began to kill his own people, including with chemical weapons. The civil war has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

Clinton reportedly supported efforts to arm more moderate rebels early in the civil war but failed to persuade President Obama to do so.

Terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), capitalized on the chaos in the Syrian war to expand their territory. In June 2014, IS launched an offensive across the Syrian border into western and northern Iraq, seizing the key city of Mosul and eventually other cities in Iraq’s Anbar province. More than 3.3 million Iraqis have been displaced by IS.

Last June, Clinton said she “could not have predicted the extent to which [IS] could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamist state.” Intelligence officials have said their efforts to monitor IS were made more difficult by the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011. Clinton largely supported the removal of U.S. forces from Iraq and dismissed criticism of the Obama administration, which was unable to secure a status of forces agreement permitting a residual troop presence.

In Ukraine, the conflict between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists has displaced1.2 million people in the country and resulted in more than 6,000 deaths since last April. Clinton infamously presented a “reset” button to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, in 2009 to promote more cooperation between the two countries, though the Russian word on the button actually translated into “overcharged.” Amid Russia’s ongoing destabilization of Ukraine and continued support for Assad, the reset policy is now widely regarded as a misguided move. Nonetheless, Clinton said last year that the reset “worked” on issues such as nuclear nonproliferation and the transport of supplies to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Additionally, the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram has forced more than 1.5 million people, including 800,000 children, to abandon their homes. Hundreds of Nigerian teachers and schoolchildren were killed last year. Despite pressure from some U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Clinton declined to name Boko Haram a terrorist group while she was secretary of state. Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) has speculated that Clinton’s decision might be related to Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction magnate and Clinton Foundation donor with substantial business interests in the country.

A Clinton spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on World Refugee Day and her policies as secretary of state.